The role of education and training in the development of technical elites: work experience and vulnerability

Whilst education and training systems in Europe have provided qualifications preparing candidates for highly skilled, responsible occupational roles, early research indicated that firms preferred to promote to such positions internally. Following changes to labour markets, several countries now place greater emphasis on early workplace learning, in the hope that transitions to work will be eased by experience of workplace environments. The outcomes of these shifts were explored through case studies in England of provision where work-based learning provides a high level of course content. Whilst students and educators ascribed value to these early experiences, evidence emerged of a narrowing of skills taught in work settings and em-phasis on behaviours and attributes. This emphasis is reflected among disadvantaged groups such as young women preparing for service roles: this paper argues for attention to the vulnerabilities of these groups, whose exclusion contributes to the reproduction of ‘elite’ occupations

Chapter 1 Technical and further education after COVID

Technical and vocational education have assumed a significant role in the plans of developed nations to overcome economic crisis, relocating learning into the workplace and extending it to higher levels. Policy discourses are based on the premise that education polarised between universities and low attainment has poorly served the needs of modern economies and young people. This chapter sets out the principal claims of these approaches to improve youth transitions and contribute to social justice. These claims are traced back to their origins in the shift to service-based economies and collapse of youth labour markets, leading to a crisis in vocational education and fuelling demand for higher education credentials; and to the emergence of international policies aiming to reconstitute youth transitions on neoliberal lines. Addressing these questions from a social justice perspective, we ask whether such disruption of the educational divide between general and vocational routes has eroded its role in reproducing and validating the social structures of the post-war period, with the creation of new routes and the postulation of new elites validating the emergence of existing and new forms of educational and social inequity

Chapter 1 Technical and further education after COVID

Technical and vocational education have assumed a significant role in the plans of developed nations to overcome economic crisis, relocating learning into the workplace and extending it to higher levels. Policy discourses are based on the premise that education polarised between universities and low attainment has poorly served the needs of modern economies and young people. This chapter sets out the principal claims of these approaches to improve youth transitions and contribute to social justice. These claims are traced back to their origins in the shift to service-based economies and collapse of youth labour markets, leading to a crisis in vocational education and fuelling demand for higher education credentials; and to the emergence of international policies aiming to reconstitute youth transitions on neoliberal lines. Addressing these questions from a social justice perspective, we ask whether such disruption of the educational divide between general and vocational routes has eroded its role in reproducing and validating the social structures of the post-war period, with the creation of new routes and the postulation of new elites validating the emergence of existing and new forms of educational and social inequity

Chapter 6 Welfare vocationalism

In contrast to the technical elites, specific groups of young people – women, those from the lowest social classes, and those with the poorest educational experiences – are already likely to engage with poorer quality further education programmes, those associated primarily with low-paid and precarious employment. They undergo workplace learning as a much more limited experience, studying in vocational areas many of which already include substantial work placements as part of many learning programmes. Childcare, which already requires longer periods in the workplace than are stipulated by T Level requirements, is a prime example. Their time in the workplace is conceptualised as learning to interact with service users and to acquire the personal attributes of workers in these occupations. Placements can sometimes be seen as the routine work of ‘caring’ and service occupations, and young people interviewed often expressed impatience and frustration, linked to preparation for routine employment. The socialisation of these groups appears a key premise of the expectations and rationale offered by policymakers for recent reforms

The cost of everything and the value of nothing: What is next for the FE sector?

First paragraph: In this chapter, we sketch out the here-and-now and suggest possible futures for post-compulsory education and training (PCET), whilst exploring our confliction with the label itself. We then offer a number of different trajectories of thought and warning against inertia. The chapter will end with our vision of how a healthy, empowering ‘FE’ can be achieved

Dis(en)abled: legitimating discriminatory practice in the name of inclusion?

This article explores tensions between the policies and practice of inclusion and the lived experiences of disabled young people in education. Drawing on the narratives of two young men who participated in a small pilot study, it utilises theoretical concepts related to disability, structure and agency, and power and control, as it explores the ways in which inclusion can create subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) forms of exclusion. Focusing on the young men's experiences of further and higher education, it is argued that inclusive practices and policies, however well intentioned, can create new and subtle forms of marginalisation through the structures and discourse intended to address exclusion. I conclude by questioning whether, in a diverse and disparate society, in which all our lives are defined by the extent to which we are more or less equal than others, inclusion can ever be anything other than an illusory concept.N/